Dead Flowers

by Alex Laidlaw

  I decided to take them both, book and sandwich, and find a place to sit outside, but first I went into the marina hoping for a cup of coffee. They serve a real swill in there, but it’s cheap, costing only a buck. There’s this table on the way to the washrooms with a hot plate and a coffee pot, cups and packets of sugar, but no cream. You’re supposed to serve yourself. There’s this box on the table with a slot, and that’s where you’re supposed to put your money. There’s no one around, so the whole thing works on the honour system, but there’s never any money in the box. I know because when I get curious, I pick up the box and shake it around. I’m probably one of a few people who ever really drinks coffee out of this place and that’s because I’m young, I think. Or else stupid enough to enjoy an especially bad cup of coffee from time to time.

  Anyway I was soon outside, reading my book, drinking my coffee, eating my sandwich and enjoying myself. There was a crowd of pigeons and seagulls around, going nuts watching me eat. They were trying to press in, trying to get close, so every now and then I had to kick up my legs and swing them in a gesture of violence. They would scatter after that, then settle further back, still watching as I went on eating.

  At some point I looked up and noticed that a red hatchback had driven into the parking lot. A man was driving. He didn’t park at first, but rolled around instead. Eventually he pulled in next to our company truck. I had parked the truck so that it faced the boat-launch ramp, so that when the barge came in, it would be ready to go. It was parked in one of those extra long spots meant to fit a truck with a boat trailer. Now this man in his comparatively little car pulled ahead, drove past the truck and turned around, and then started backing up toward the ramp. It looked as if he was going to descend the ramp, which of course would have taken him into the ocean.

  At first I thought he was trying to imitate one of those trucks, the way they go backward down the ramp until their trailers run into the water. I had seen those big trucks doing it a hundred times by now myself. But that didn’t make any sense. Of course he wasn’t pretending to be a truck.

  The car rolled back until it was on the ramp, but at this point there was some sort of a bush in the way, interrupting my line of sight. I didn’t see the car go into the water, but I waited. I listened, but didn’t hear anything. Maybe, I thought, the driver is just about to realize his mistake, and in a moment of embarrassment, he’ll send his car flying up the ramp, speeding out of the parking lot. A few minutes passed, and nothing happened. I felt suddenly nervous, so I jumped to my feet and ran until I could see around the bush. Mysteriously, the car had disappeared. There was nothing on the ramp, and no sign of a disturbance in the water.

  I was pacing, wondering now what to do. I should tell somebody, but who? And what should I tell them? I wondered. The office at the marina was closed as the staff had all gone out to lunch. I thought I ought to call someone. What was the number to call when you thought that maybe you had seen a car slip quietly, secretly into the ocean? And what about the driver? Was he dead? Was this a situation warranting emergency response?

  I went back to what was left of my coffee. Surely in a moment I would know what to do. I thought about dialling information, but did people still use 411? For now, it was best to relax and wait for a better idea to come.

  Nothing came, and soon I had waited so long that here was my boss pulling in with the barge. By now, I’d even started doubting myself. Had I really seen what I thought I had? Had I only imagined it? Had I somehow missed the car driving off when I wasn’t looking, itself and its driver alive and intact?

  My boss would never believe it if I told him what I thought I’d seen. I hardly was able to believe it myself. So, I didn’t say anything. At least, not yet. I simply got into the truck, drove onto the barge, and as we pulled away, I stood on the deck and peered, searchingly, into the murky water.

  That was a Friday afternoon, and there were lots of other things going on at work. There were jobs that had to be finished before we could pack it all in for the weekend.

  Back on the island, I rejoined the crew. They were busy, some hauling bundles of shingles up a ladder, others hammering away at a roof. I joined them going up and down the ladder, and it was tiring work, so we took a lot of breaks. It was payday too, so everyone talked about how they were going to spend their money.

  Lucas would be going to yet another show by yet another of his many favourite bands. Lucas is broke, but he’s always spending eighty, ninety, a hundred dollars to see another one of these bands perform on stage. He’s always complaining too, saying that he can’t play guitar anymore like he used to do, not since his hands have become so hardened from work.

  Jacob would be doing nothing tonight. Same as every other night. He never does anything. These days he’s dating an inexplicably attractive girl, and as usual, they planned to spend the evening sitting on Jacob’s living room couch, smoking pot and streaming pirated foreign films.

  We asked John what his plans were, what he was doing with his weekend. John was the old guy, the carpenter. He said he’d be doing nothing too, but a different kind of nothing, looking after his mom. We nodded our heads. John’s mother is dying, we all know that, but it’s something so far removed from our own lives of youth and distraction that we often forget. She is dying slowly of old age and John has taken to living with her in a place way out beyond the edges of town. John told us that his was a life of nothingness, the likes of which we couldn’t understand. When he said that, we all had to laugh. We couldn’t help it. He said this to us all the time, like a broken record, over and over again.

  Finally, the guys asked if I had any plans. I knew there was something I was meant to remember. It was something important, but my mind was a blank. I opened my mouth to start talking, hoping that whatever it was would come out. And it did.

  Sylvie’s got an opening, I said to them.

  Sylvie is my girlfriend, and an artist. We’ve been together for over six months. Aside from being an artist, Sylvie works in a small café which I frequent for its excellent breakfasts, and because on the weekends it’s a good place to sit, to read a book and to drink a cup of coffee. It’s also a good place to read the news, and to drink five cups of coffee, if that’s what you want. I mean, if that’s the kind of day you want to have.

  In her art, Sylvie uses only black and red ink. She draws with these pens that have a practically microscopic tip, and she creates intricate patterns of concentric, elliptical shapes, many overlaid onto each other, but all of shifting sizes and degrees. The effect is of something almost delicate, but also of tremendous internal tension. They are like headaches or knots tied into wood. Like a stomach cramp, or the shell of a nut.

  One woman, reviewing Sylvie’s last show, claimed that “the artist was unwittingly drawing the contents of her womb.” She wrote this long, intellectual piece about the gesture of a young woman baring her womb on gallery walls. Sylvie, she said, was dumb both to the trappings, as well as to the potentials of her own femininity. Or, maybe she used the word “womanhood.” Sylvie, she said, belonged to a new generation in which gender was largely repressed. Sylvie and I read the review together and laughed about it for an hour or more, but not because the woman’s ideas were absurd, or even specifically untrue. It just seemed, more than anything else, that the writer was bored.

  Now, as the afternoon was wearing on, the guys and I decided to quit taking so many breaks, to buck up and get those shingles onto the roof. And we did, though it very nearly killed us. We were sore and tired at the end of the day. I was so tired, in fact, that I had almost forgotten about the car.

  Lots of people came out to the opening, and Sylvie was busy all night talking, trying to explain what could not be explained. Every so often she would lift her eyes, and looking across the gallery, finding me or another friend, would raise her eyebrows and make a face.

  If I was going to tell anyone about the car now, it would nee
d to be her, but we hardly had a chance to talk. Actually, I was alright with that. I didn’t really feel like talking anyway. All night in fact, I felt morose. I was tired and sad, and because I was sad, I wound up drinking too much wine. It was supposed to be free for people on the guest list, but I guess I drank so much that the bartender wanted to cut me off. In the end, he didn’t have the nerve. He only cut me off from the free stuff. After that I had to pay, but it didn’t slow me down.

  Being drunk, I figured, was fine as long as I could avoid too much talking. I didn’t talk to anyone, all night long. Just about the only thing I said was goodbye to Sylvie, standing at the door. She wanted to go out with her friends and I wanted to go home, but I told her I’d be into the café for coffee sometime tomorrow morning. Before leaving, I congratulated her because it seemed everyone was excited about her art, and that made me happy for her, for what it was worth.

  In the morning, I felt like death. I couldn’t eat breakfast, so I headed out and went straight to Sylvie’s café. I was in before she even arrived.

  Sylvie came in looking bleary and a little worse for wear. She saw me sitting at a corner table and made a gesture as if to say, Sorry, but I’m already late. I’ll come over to talk when I can. Then she stuck out her tongue and put on a look of exaggerated nausea. I widened my eyes and nodded as if to say, I’m right there with you.

  Today was definitely going to be a five-cups-of-coffee type day. I’d already grabbed some newspaper from the pile on a table by the door. The papers had been picked apart, so what you got from the pile was a melee of sorts, different sections scrambled together, and often from different days of the week. At any rate, the news is always the same. The entire world is going to hell. We’re on a sinking ship, and nobody cares. We’ve got days left, maybe weeks, maybe months.

  On the front page of the provincial section, there were two stories that caught my attention. The first described how the government had started rewriting the Fisheries Act. Apparently all this protecting of fish was getting in the way of the economy so they wanted to weaken the definition of what could be called a “fish habitat.” Poor fish, I thought. They don’t even know. They can’t even prepare for what’s coming.

  The other story was something curious about a woman in one of the northern towns. The woman was a widow but had recently become convinced that her husband was still alive. He was hiding in the mountains, she claimed, and had been doing so for years. Had been coming into town every two or three days to pick up groceries and other supplies. He was never any good at planning, she said, by way of explaining the frequency of his forays into town. Anyway, now the woman had publicly threatened to kill herself if he didn’t come home.

  The story cut off for me at that point, said to be continued on the ninth page. I looked for that page, but it was missing. That entire section of the paper had been pulled apart. I felt worried for a moment—worried for that woman and the whole situation. I thought there had to be some way for me to find out the rest of the story, and of course there was and it would have been easy, but already I’d begun to move on. In the next moment, my worry had passed. For all I was concerned, that woman might already be dead and it wouldn’t make a lick of difference in my life.

  I went to the counter and ordered a double espresso, long with a little milk. When it was ready, Sylvie brought it to the table. She also brought a rag so that she could stand and pretend to be wiping the table down.

  I might not make it through the day, she said.

  I know, I said. I feel the same way.

  What happened to you? You didn’t come out with us.

  I was drinking at the gallery, I said. I had enough wine to take out a horse.

  Sylvie laughed, and then she winced.

  Hey, I wanted to tell you something, I said.

  Tell me later. I’ve got to get back to work.

  Do you want to get together later?

  Maybe when I’m done, she said. We could try out that Thai place for dinner.

  Sylvie had been trying for a while to get me to go to this new Thai restaurant. The problem was that it had opened in the place where another Thai restaurant had been before. The old restaurant had been awful so I naturally doubted that this new one would be good. I gave Sylvie a doubtful look.

  I know, I know, she said. But I have a good feeling about it.

  She leaned forward and almost gave me a kiss but didn’t. Then she smiled and walked away.

  The No-Cry Sleep Solution

  for the fish, and for the pond Been a while now I’ve been talking with the ghost of an old friend—months of locked into nothingness, writing errant-headed phrases on a notepad by the bed. I complain.

  That’s the way it is, she says.

  Of course, I say, and hang my coat over the back of a chair.

  She asks me as I sit, Do you still see cursive patterns in the smoke of a cigarette? Or does this, like so many other notions, dissipate and fade over the years?

  I tell her yes, but also no. I tell her I’m supposing violence, pretending actually, while proposing some good loneliness might come about by her.

  Not in whatever smoke I’m breathing, I explain. What comes out of my lungs, over my own lips is utter gibberish.

  I tell her how I could not have believed it would happen again, not after my son was born. What happened? The leaves turned yellow. And it seems to have happened all in a day.

  How could the seasons go on changing? I said. That’s what I caught myself thinking. Just as they had always done before…

  They did, she said. They do.

  Apparently.

  And it means as much as anything else, she supposed, and my friend curled her long arm up to pull on her cigarette. Then she blew a cloud of dissipated words into the room.

  * * *

  A glass broke on the kitchen shelf. A pile of spoons fell to the floor. Somehow neither this nor that awoke the baby in his bassinette. When the water heater broke, we got used to carrying stones from the oven into the bath. You get used to everything, eventually. Everyone does.

  This is how it happened, they say: the winds picked up, and they never let off.

  I drew a bath one time in the late afternoon. I closed the bathroom door and turned on the light. At that time of day, the apartment was full of the long, low light of a dwindling sun. I spent such a long while in the tub, I believed that in the meantime the sun would have set. There were no windows in the room. The faucet dripped. I did nothing to correct it. I only gazed into the bare, white tiles of the wall in the bare white light of the overhead bulb. This is to say that when I opened the door, I expected to find myself entering a different apartment. I expected darkened rooms and the mood of a different time. Instead it was still light, the westerly rooms still cut with the long, low light of the sun. Same long sun as at the end of every day. I checked the clock to be sure this wasn’t a dream.

  I tell my friend, It was twenty-two minutes past five. So, I said to myself, fuck it, go to sleep. And sleep into evening, all night, until dawn.

  * * *

  She’s in the bedroom with a man. He’s got ten years on both of us, pepper on his body.

  She’s saying, Tell me what it was like before.

  The man starts telling his story: Where I come from the people hung like marionettes. There were diners open all night, selling pizza and fries with gravy and a can of Coke for $3.25. Everyone paid what they could for what they needed. Whatever they didn’t have, they couldn’t afford. They needed love, they paid. And women had a habit of walking right into your house, right out of the rain, to dry themselves on your bedsheets. I come from a cruel place, an angry place, but also a simple place. When a woman left a man’s house she’d leave his front door hanging open, and every man was either too lazy or tempered to shut it. So like mouths in the morning, as you walked down the street, you saw the gaping, empty mouths of doors saying who’d been here and who’d been there. Who had
had some kind of money for love. Nobody slept well. In our town there should be no rainy days. There hadn’t been a war in sixty-five years, so the people took it out on themselves. There was all kinds of violence. People walked into the river during the middle of the day. The streets were empty. People holed up in their rooms. They shredded their drapes with knives from their kitchen drawers.

  When I left that place—this was years ago now—there was nothing to speak of in my life but a pile of wet clothes in the grass. One leaf overturned in the wind, as they say. We stood in the park, ragged, dirty and rained upon, burned but never changing in the flame of human sport. One pant leg cut into the middle thigh. Some would have said: My god, what a pity. Some would say: What a time we had.

  So, I came to this place, where the people lived like crabs. Then seeing such a heap of abandoned spaces—factories, waterways, bridged and bricks—I crossed the street, wanting to meet someone there. I cried into a payphone, trying to make a call. And of course, my shoes got wet, as well as my belt and underpants. Finally, I looked up to see what was dripping, to find where the water was coming from. Over me was nothing but open sky and I realized it was only raining, again, after everything.

  My friend lights a cigarette.

  And I’m watching all this from under the covers of sleep. I tell my friend to tell the man that we’re all in this together, but she doesn’t hear, or doesn’t want to talk.